We are going to my sister-in-law's for Thanksgiving and she wants to do all the cooking. From me she wants hors d oeuvres including the family fav - deviled eggs. I think I'll do a platter of eggs, exotic olives and other unusual things for light and interesting munching. (Any ideas out there? Comment away!) I've never cooked an entire Thanksgiving meal in my life and have never cooked a turkey. That could be a sad commentary on a deprived upbringing but no, it was just being around people all my life who loved to cook and, most likely, not having children. I think I might try to see if sis-in-law would like me to bring a dessert like an old family recipe of Pineapple Ice Box Cake (vanilla wafer crumbs topped with a butter/powdered sugar/egg mixture topped with whip cream and crushed pineapple mixture and topped with more crumbs).
The Pineapple Ice Box Cake goes way back in my family and is purported to have been created by my Grandma Allen. The town newspaper even interviewed her once about her cooking and published the recipe. Funny--local fame. She and my grandfather (LD we called him, short for Lorenzo Dow) were such good folks; I don't remember anything negative related to them. Grandma's thing was cooking. During the war years, when ingredients were rationed, people would save their ration coupons and give them to her and she would make wedding cakes. Growing up, I lived in walking distance from my grandparents. She had one of those white enameled "baking centers" where flour, sugar, etc were in built-in bins that pivoted forward. They had a root cellar, entered by a trap door from the kitchen, lined with shelves of goodies that were "put up" when in season, mostly fruit and jams and jellies. I remember my mother telling me about her brothers being able to eat a whole quart of peaches in one sitting. I remember Grandma lamenting how hard it was to get gooseberries like she used to pick in the back woods of Idaho. Of course, Huckleberry Jam (made from Idaho's Blue Mountain Huckleberries picked on family excursions) was "gold standard". Huckleberry pies were featured at all big gatherings and a slice of huckleberry pie was a common daily offering to friends who stopped by for pie and coffee (something that happened often). Apricot jam was a favorite of my Grandma and lots of pickled beets (yum-I still love them and they bring back fond memories.) They always had a huge garden and I remember her loving beet greens. I didn't appreciate them at the time and have been meaning to make some to try. I don't remember her or my folks making relish but I bet if they had known of the Indian concept of Chutney (combining fruit with onions and ginger - a sweet/savory mix) they would have liked it. Spices, though, didn't go beyond salt, pepper, (and maybe onion powder later on) and the "holiday spices" of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves - ah, they did use cloves in the pickled beets).
To my Indian friends, American middle class folks seem so spice-deprived. It’s true, and our family certainly never "developed a taste" for them. My husband still has trouble getting his taste buds to "embrace" a lot of the Indian spices. I've evolved and love a lot of the more "exotic" tastes. I was reading a cookbook last night featuring Ayurvedic (eye-your-vay-dick) recipes (it's a "healing regimen" originating in ancient India still practiced today that centers around food and different spices or ingredients for different constitutions and different conditions.) Spices are a prime component and tied to health. I wonder how Americans got so bland, maybe it was our roots in England - a cuisine I hear is pretty bland. (How did British cuisine not get influenced by Indian cuisine with all their occupying of the country? I do hear, from friends who hang out in Britain, though, that Indian restaurants are more prolific than others and have fabulous Indian dishes. So they must have developed a taste for it.) If I would have walked into a house as a kid and smelled the concoctions I now make, I don't know what I would have thought; I would certainly have been intrigued.
Well, food stream-of-consciousness this morning. I do, now, finally get the thing about reading cookbooks like novels. So much culture, history, etc is reflected through food.
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